Pickles's Law was hastily chipped in stone to make the Tories look "humble" in recession-ised Britain. There were to be no pictures of ex-Bullingdon boys knocking back the Bolly. So Pickles will not be best pleased with all the party activists caught swigging the good plonk on the eve of George Osborne's austerity speech. And would have been horrified at the commotion at the Spectator party last night when an enterprising photographer, who was banned from the event, snapped Tory leader David Cameron nursing a champagne flute.

Shadow prisons minister Alan Duncan, who is still not out of the stocks after complaining that parliamentarians were being forced to live on "rations", was busted, mid-guzzle, along with shadow universities minister David Willetts, at the New Statesman party the night before. So when I saw him at the Spectator shindig he railed against the viciousness of those printing pictures showing him drinking the forbidden grape-juice, before proceeding to point and chant "naughty girl, naughty girl!" at me as I walked past him.

Tory high command are extremely anxious not to frighten the voters. A good conference is a dull conference. Gossip-wise it should be, if possible, transcendentally boring. But Champagnegate is a scandal entirely of the party's own making. At the Labour party conference last week cabinet ministers turned out to the News International party and drank Murdoch's fizz without fear. You could argue they needed it, after the defection of the Sun – as Napoleon said, "In defeat I need it". But you'd have to be a very committed teetotaller to resist a free glass on a silver tray after a hard day's conferencing.

In part, the champagne ban serves another purpose than attempting to make the Tories look humbler. The order was first drafted last year when the full impact of the recession hit home just before the Tory party conference began but it must have been helped along by the disastrous booze-fuelled leaks at the Labour conference the week before. This year it's not just a case of put down the Pol Roger, it's a case of stay as sober as possible and avoid any slips.

Yet post-election, should the country turn blue, don't expect the ban to last. The champagne socialists will surely only be replaced by champagne socialites. As Joseph Dargent, a famous wine merchant, once claimed: "No government could survive without champagne. Champagne in the throats of our diplomatic people is like oil in the wheels of an engine."